In 1980, U.S. Pat. No. 4,220,619 to Kersten was issued that provided a process for forming a connection between two groups of glass fibers by having the groups abut ends and separating them about a star-type center support. The fibers were then held in place by an outer shrink tube that was shrunk around the center support. The '619 patent requires a very costly and time consuming tool to couple the groups of glass fibers and serves to create the splice as opposed to protecting the splice after it is made. What's more, inner tubes are not provided to surround and strengthen the splice once made.
Current splice protection systems, as shown in FIG. 2, have a sleeve 20 with an outer tube 22 and an inner tube 24 constructed of melt flow material for receiving a singular, spliced optical fiber therein. A center support member 26 adds strength to the sleeve and prevents the singular optical fiber from breaking. A heat source is typically used to raise the temperature of the melt flow material of the inner tube, which uses a set amount of battery energy and time. This has proven costly and time consuming when a plurality of optical fibers, which have been spliced, must be protected such as is often the case in the telecommunications industry.
It would therefore be advantageous to have a sleeve and method of installing the sleeve that allows a plurality of optical fibers to be protected within the outer tube of the sleeve of same diameter and length as the single-fiber sleeve thereby using the same amount of battery energy and shrink time to protect a plurality of optical fibers as formerly required to protect a singular fiber. It would also be desirable to have the plurality of inner tubes, encompassing the plurality of optical fibers, to abut one another. Therefore, when the heat source is applied to the sleeve, the inner tubes melt flow together, yet provide individual encapsulation of each fiber thereby providing greater rigidity at the splice and thus increased protection for the spliced optical fibers therein upon removal of the heat source.